D’oh! in the Desert: Why was an unwanted $34 million headquarters built at Camp Leatherneck?

This building cost $34 million to build at Camp Leatherneck — and it may not ever be used. (SIGAR photo)

A short walk from the main U.S. headquarters facility at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, sits a hulking two-story building behind chain link fences and cement walls. It cost $34 million to build, and it will likely never serve any purpose for U.S. forces.

SIGAR, as Sopko’s organization is known, sent Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel a letter this week asking about the decision-making process that led to construction of the building. Available here, it says Marine commanders at Camp Leatherneck asked for the project to be stopped as early as May 2010, but the U.S. military went ahead with building it anyway.

The timing means the request was issued shortly after Marine Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, then a two-star general, took over as the ranking U.S. commander in Helmand province. Nevertheless, the Air Force’s 772nd Enterprise Sourcing Squadron issued a task order for construction the February to AMEC Earth and Environment Inc., a British company, SIGAR found.

“According to an official at Camp Leatherneck, the building can accommodate approximately 1,200 to 1,500 staff, and includes a war room, briefing theater, and offices for senior military officials, including a three star general,” Sopko’s letter said. “However, even under the best case scenario, only 450 people may be able to use the building today, which would result in excessive operation and maintenance costs because the cooling systems would be underutilized.”

I’ve made three reporting trips to Afghanistan since May 2010, including two last year. The building popped up in between the first two assignments, a monstrosity that is a short walk from the current plywood headquarters buildings used by Marine commanders at Leatherneck, currently led by Maj. Gen. W. Lee Miller. I asked about the plan for the building several times last year while on base, and was told it would serve as home to a regimental headquarters and other organizations. It seemed to be overkill, but giving the buildingboom at Camp Leatherneck over the last couple years, not out of the realm of possibilities.

The scope of the building, laid out by SIGAR, seems overly ambitious even for when U.S. operations in Afghanistan were at their peak in 2011, however. For example, there may be a home for a three-star general in the facility, but the Marine operations in the region have never been led by anyone with more than two stars.

The building’s existence stands as a concrete example of what happens when not enough questions are raised up the chain of command, especially at the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. While workers built a headquarters building that would stand out virtually anywhere, President Obama and others signed off on a decision that now has a fraction of the troops in Helmand province than there were in 2010 and 2011.

As SIGAR put it, the new headquarters is a “White Elephant” without a home. Investigations are now underway to determine what happened behind the scenes.

4 Comments

Maybe if Mills, Amos and the others spent more time on actual duties – and less time trying to illegally taint trials, constantly witchhunt down troops to convict, waste time on heritage tour garbage… gaydom mess… “let’s not hurt people’s feelings” stupidity… they may have actually focused more on stopping this waste.

Our government can waste over 34 Million on a camp which in all likelihood will be destroyed without ever being used but our politicians and FEMA refuses to give a dime to it’s citizens that lost everything they owned in the recent floods in New York State. it’s a travesty and our politicians should be ashamed, but that won’t happen as long as they get their fat pay checks and FreeHealth care.

34 million?? no biggie Remember that the total costs of Afghanistan divided by the number of troops there gives a total of about 1 million dollars per year per pair of boots on the ground. Another way of looking at it is that we have killed about 30,000 Taliban since we began and that this works out to about 50 million per Taliban. Sooooo this boondogle cost only the same a one Taliban dead.